Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States, France and the European Union of “burying” the Minsk Group, noting that they refuse to cooperate with Russia in any format.

At a press conference on European security issues held on December 1, Lavrov said that no one remembers the Minsk Group anymore.

“The West has stated that they will not cooperate with Russia in any format. Thus, they announced the completion of the OSCE Minsk Group activities. The Minsk Group was once created in order to unite countries with influence in the region, which can send signals to both Yerevan and Baku, and which agreed to work under the chairmanship of Russia and the United States. At some stage, France also became a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group. Since then, the Co-chairs have done very useful work, met with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan both separately and held joint events,” the Russian Foreign Minister said.

Lavrov stressed that after the 44-day war in 2020, a truce was established with Russia's mediation efforts and a number of other agreements were reached as a result of high-level meetings between the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, he added, “we have witnessed nervous attempts by other players to get involved in these processes”:

“We have no problem with that. The only thing we mentioned in our contacts with Yerevan and Baku is that the West, after the start of a special military operation, through  Washington and Paris declared that it would not cooperate with Russia anywhere, and in any format. Thus, they announced the completion of the activities of the OSCE Minsk Group. Therefore, when our Armenian partners sometimes mention the Minsk Group, we say that this issue should not be addressed to us. This question should be addressed to the United States, France, which have announced that they will no longer convene this group, and, of course, the question should be addressed to Azerbaijan, because without Azerbaijan's participation any mediation efforts are meaningless.”

Lavrov mentioned that a meeting of the demarcation commission is being held in Brussels, to which Armenians and Azerbaijanis, politely attend, but Brussels does not have maps of former Soviet countries, they are only in the General Staff of Russia.

"It's the same with the peace treaty. They went to Prague for the Forum of the European Political Community, where they signed a document stating that the agreement on demarcation and peace should be based on the UN Charter and the border established by the Alma-Ata Declaration of December 1991. And by the Alma-Ata Declaration, all Soviet republics formed the Union of Independent States and confirmed the inviolability of the borders that existed between the union republics of the Soviet Union. In other words, at that time the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region was definitely part of the Azerbaijani SSR. And when, within the framework of the document, it was approved by Armenia, Azerbaijan, France, and Mr. Michel that they would recognize the Alma-Ata Declaration without preconditions, it certainly facilitated further work, because it gave an answer to the status of Karabakh issue. It is not for nothing that the Armenian leadership has been talking more recently not about the status, but about the need to ensure the rights of the Armenian population of Karabakh. The Azerbaijani side is ready for this, they are ready to provide guarantees of the rights that other Azerbaijani citizens also have. And nobody remembers about the Minsk Group," Lavrov said.